


Suffering is a Fact of Life

by Artianaiolanthe



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game), Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Cheryl Has Issues, Dreams and Nightmares, Hallucinations, Temporary Character Death, The Entity doesn't think ahead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26609977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artianaiolanthe/pseuds/Artianaiolanthe
Summary: Even as far away from it as she’d ever been, Cheryl dreamed of Silent Hill.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21





	Suffering is a Fact of Life

**Author's Note:**

> A quick look on my interpretation of the problems that face Cheryl in the fog.  
> Also technically my first official DBD or Silent Hill work in writing so... please be gentle.

Hide. Do generators and totems. Unhook fellow survivors. Open gates. Die or survive. 

The cycle has no end in sight, and Cheryl was morbidly bemused at her naive worldview upon first being dragged to the Entity’s realm. This was a different circle of hell than what Silent Hill was, and while she hardly intended to give up her efforts to escape she was almost thankful for the reprieve from worrying about a resurgence of the Order and being forced into being the Incubator.

Almost.

Something she quickly learned once the pain and panic and adrenaline finally faded and she succumbed to exhaustion was that in her dreams, Silent Hill was still very much alive and well. 

She dreamed of her skin coming alive with fire, screaming with pain while it refused to char or melt and neglected to heal.

She dreamed of her mother- Alessa’s mother- of Dahlia Gillespie, proselytizing and chanting and forcing pain and waking nightmares and demanding the return of the second half of her soul.

She dreamed of Claudia, first a scared child, then a desperately mad woman, grabbing her and begging for her to return, for God to spare the suffering, for her to see sense.

She dreamed of Alessa, desperate and bitter, hissing _I told you so_ while trying to strangle her.

She dreamed of monsters and men, of the line she had feared she lost sight of, of the beings that worshipped blindly even as she ripped away their lives in a blinding blur of guilt and fury.

She dreamed of condemning glares and whispers of Paradise lost, of envy that she’d found a way and was too selfish to share her way, of outrage that God had rewarded her defiance.

She dreamed of a twisted immortality of never ending suffering, Schroedinger's invulnerability where she was wounded beyond ever healing but unable to escape the pain by dying, of limitless power at her fingertips but imprisonment in a space so tight she can’t even outstretch her arms.

She dreamed of her lungs overwhelmed with smoke that stung her throat when she tried to breath, of her skin crawling with barbed wire and burning with the Order’s scripture, of being trapped on an altar with fingers dug into her skin while followers tried to rush along God's birth and took and _took and_ **_took--_ **

Sometimes when she woke up, her entire body buzzed with a sickening sense of an encompassing illusion of power. At least, she hoped it was an illusion, seeing as the alternative was… was…

Sometimes, if she strayed too far from the campfire without company, her ears played tricks on her and she could’ve sworn she could hear the Order’s prayers in Dahlia’s harsh words, Claudia’s woeful pleas, or Alessa’s wailing sobs. She always quickly went back before they got too loud, all but running, feeling like the voices would turn into something tangible that could grab and drag her back. 

Last time she’d had these dreams, Silent Hill was calling her back. She should’ve been… not safe, but blocked from it if she was here. The Entity wouldn’t be so sloppy as to risk a different sort of god in its territory, would it…?

She couldn’t be sure.

The first couple weeks, a trial could always be trusted to keep her mind busy before it had time to wander. It made her a quick study at learning the best loops and maneuvers to avoid getting hit, and got her plenty of use out of her hoarded collection of flashlights. And if she died on a hook or antagonized the killer into using a mori or simply leaving her to bleed out, well. It hurt like a bitch, but it wasn’t a complete loss.

If there wasn’t a trial to take her mind off of it, after a while Cheryl opted to provoke killers between trials, and usually had to stumble back to the fire either with new scars to add to her old batch or groggy from a recent death, aching phantom pain replacing whatever that glorious rush of power was. 

Here, Cheryl was just another survivor. Easily breakable, nothing special or sacred, nothing that could be called holy.

It was a viscerally annoying reminder to have to hold onto in this place, but it was something that she could keep in mind whenever the fog that surrounded her felt more like home than hell.

**Author's Note:**

> For more information, this interpretation of Cheryl can be found on repressedalliance.tumblr.com/


End file.
